You know the problem with perfect things? They’re perfect. And the moment something exceeds expectations, everyone expects more. Shadow of the Colossus was – and is – transcendent; “perfect,” even. Except for one thing. And though that one thing wasn’t enough to seriously tarnish the game, after that encounter it was super hard for me to be objective. I found it difficult to forgive or forget a flaw that would have gone unnoticed in any other game. Because Shadow of the Colossus was perfect, imperfections stand out.
I refer, of course, to the Eleventh Colossus – that little bull-looking one in the temple. The one that’s afraid of fire. The one that knocks you down, then knocks you down again immediately when you get up, then keeps knocking you down until you die.
The Eleventh Colossus isn’t actually hard to defeat: you wave a torch in its face and when it cowers you whale on it. Eventually you can knock it off a cliff and kill it down there. But he is so annoying, so frustrating, that I nearly abandoned the game then and there. In the end I consulted a walkthrough and beat him; like I said, it wasn’t hard. But that bitter taste stayed with me for the rest of my play, in a game that otherwise reveled in brilliance.
This is human nature, I think. The more we love, the more we see the flaws; the more unfair we are when we judge them; the more difficulty we have letting them go. The Eleventh Colossus ate up maybe 30 minutes of a 16-hour game. That’s like three percent. But even now, when long years have buffed away any other complaints I might have had, I remember less that it transported me and more that it couldn’t do it throughout – the Eleventh Colossus had broken the spell.
Tempest in a Teapot
Fair? Certainly not. It’s completely unreasonable to penalize a game that’s otherwise a diamond because of one miniscule issue. After all, I admit I’d never have noticed it in most other games, because most other games have a raft of small complaints. Even in the very good ones, there are sufficient rough edges that you’re able to overlook them. You’re not being desensitized to flaws in these games, you’re simply not super-sensitive. The flaws sit within a more realistic perspective. Did I heavily penalize Half-Life 2 for the Ravenholm mission? Or the excision of fiction regarding the Combine Wall? Or the bizarre story? Or the fact that the protagonist never speaks despite being engaged in myriad conversations? I did not. I mentioned them, or most of them; I said they made me unhappy. If the Eleventh Colossus had been in Half-Life 2 I would have mentioned it, but it wouldn’t have tainted the experience, because while Half-Life 2 is outstanding, it’s not… it’s not like being in the presence of the divine.
I bring this up because I finally finished Portal 2’s single player last night (review forthcoming), and I was surprised to find myself kind of angry at the game. I couldn’t quite explain why, only that for the last few days I’d felt something unpleasant when I booted it up and almost – almost, not quite – didn’t enjoy myself as I was playing. And that was disorienting to me because there’s essentially nothing to complain about in Portal 2.
In despair, I called Dobry for assistance. And we discussed. And he was able, as he so often is, to talk me down, to point out the irrationality of my feelings. And during our conversation I finally realized what it was that had thrown the switch in my mind: I had had an Eleventh Colossus moment in Portal 2, and that was affecting my whole outlook.
You see, in the Portal games (and I’ll go into this in greater detail in the review), you get stumped but never frustrated. The puzzles are so well made that precisely one second before your brain says “fuck it, I have no idea,” you see the solution. At worst your brain says, “I have to sleep on this.” In many instances I would solve Portal 2 puzzles in my head after waking up the following morning. But once or twice in Portal 2, I was baffled enough to get irritated. And that really threw me, because it never happened in Portal and Portal 2 is absolutely positively a worthy successor in every single way. So when I hit a tiny snag, my mind turned on it.
Now, here we are again, talking about two instances in 14 hours. And in fairness to Valve, the instances where I got stuck in Portal 2 weren’t exactly the same as the Eleventh Colossus. The feeling was the same, but the Eleventh Colossus is bad design – a foe that knocks you down continuously so you’re helpless to do anything. My roadblocks in Portal 2 were just puzzles I couldn’t figure out; the answers were there. But still, that one spark of frustration affected my whole outlook, to the point that I was beginning to resent the game.
It’s Not You, it’s Me
After Dobry sorted out my Portal 2 dilemma he began to berate me (this is also something you can count on Dobry for).
I suck, apparently.
“You suck,” he said.
Probing the issue a bit further revealed that I suck because I didn’t finish Homeworld, a sublime masterpiece of design and environmental mood.
Why didn’t I finish it? Eleventh Colossus moment.
Homeworld’s Super Nova Station mission. Eleventh Colossus, thy name is Bright Star.
About halfway through Homeworld, you arrive in a system where the enemy has set up an orbital research facility to study the aftereffects of a supernova. They’ve been harassing and terrorizing your fleet throughout the game, and this is a chance for a petty if satisfying instant of revenge: you try to wipe out my people, I’m gonna sneak up on your stupid space station and blow up your stupid science project. So there.
The entire system is awash in radioactivity from the supernova. It’s so bad out there that the ships in your fleet take continuous damage unless they stay in very narrow lanes of asteroids, where the space debris block enough of the radiation to make traversal possible. In and of itself that’s not a problem. It adds a layer of challenge to what might otherwise be a straightforward mission.
But the supernova remnant is so obnoxiously bright that it’s quite impossible to see the ships in your fleet most of the time. It’s difficult to be stealthy, and more difficult still to stay within the confines of little asteroid passages, when you can’t see where you’re going. I tried and tried and finally… Eleventh Colossus.
I stayed with Portal 2 and Shadow of the Colossus despite those moments, but I abandoned Homeworld. Its moment was no worse than the others. And the game is brilliant.
To be honest, though, there were moments when I wanted to quit Portal 2 and Shadow, and it’s distinctly possible that I didn’t because I felt a responsibility – either to review them, or to complete these two very important examples of the art form, or because I didn’t want Dobry to be mad at me. As much as I had adored every moment of Homeworld, as much as that game was pretty damn close to perfection, I didn’t have any responsibilities associated with it.
It’s on the Crossbeam of an Attic Roof in a Burned-Out House
To demonstrate how humans differ, I present the example of Thief, which Eleventh-Colossused a large number of players in a key mission called The Haunted Cathedral.
The Haunted Cathedral. Which you never actually enter during the mission that bears its name.
Like the brightness of Homeworld’s supernova, like the puzzle I couldn’t see, like the Colossus that knocks you over, it was a tiny thing that did most players in. The conceit of the mission is that despite its title, you don’t actually enter the haunted Hammer Cathedral during it. You’re supposed to, but it’s magically locked and you have to embark on several other missions before you’re able to get in. No, The Haunted Cathedral takes place almost entirely in the City streets, in a district that had suffered a terrible and inexplicable fate some years earlier. Out of the blue it got overrun by demons, ghosts, and other horrors; no one knew what their problem was or how to get rid of them. Not knowing what else to do, the City government simply walled off the entire neighborhood and declared it off limits. Since no one had time to grab their stuff before being evacuated, there’s a ton of treasure just lying around. And to beat The Haunted Cathedral, you have to gather a truly ludicrous amount of cash. Most of it is easy to find, but about 2% is quite well hidden. We’re talking hours of nook and cranny peering, at night, in a deadly and huge region.
It sucks to need $1,000 worth of loot, to have $998.50, and not be able to move on until you find a god damned charm bracelet or something. You have $998.50. Call it a day. It drove a lot of players away from Thief. As it happened I got lucky and found that last $1.50 on the crossbeam of an attic roof in a burned-out house after only maybe an hour of combing the area, so I didn’t get an Eleventh Colossusing in that game.
And like Dobry, who finished Homeworld and holds it in the esteem that it deserves, I berate people who quit Thief because of The Haunted Cathedral.
“It’s annoying, but it’s not that hard,” I say. “It’s like a couple hours. In the scheme of things it’s nothing. You suck.”
And so it goes.
The World is Not Enough
The failure lies not with games but human nature. One of our many great shortcomings as a species is our innate inability to be satisfied. Some are better at ignoring it than others. Some people can have only one drink and then stop. Some can find it in themselves to forgive a trespass from an individual or thing they’ve idolized. But many – most – can’t.
And the more satisfying something is, the more it fulfills you, the more of it you demand. The more of it you need. And the less able you are to absolve it when it doesn’t live up to your logarithmically growing expectations. A surfeit of joy is a terrible thing; the more we have the more we want. It becomes, eventually, impossible to satisfy.
The funny thing is, I’ll play good, mediocre, or even poor games for hours and not suffer the way an Eleventh Colossus moment makes me suffer. I played Final Fantasy XIII for 91 hours, 17 minutes, and 38 seconds. Despite playing through the original Portal at least ten times, I haven’t racked up near that many hours on it. And the original Portal is one of the, maybe the only, instances where the game is perfect all the way through without even a hint of an Eleventh Colossus moment. How can this be?
In part because Portal is short. Two hours and you’re done. Though I bemoaned its brevity at the time – not as a flaw but because I wanted more – Portal was smart to end before it had a chance to hurt me. Portal 2 is of course much longer, and though not an instant of that time is actually unpleasant, the simple fact of its length introduces the possibility that I or someone like me will find in it something that deflates its magic balloon. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy XIII was what it was. The many disappointments and frustrations it served up were par for the course, and while I eventually abandoned the game out of frustration, in some ways my memory of it is fonder than my memory of Portal 2 will be.
Perhaps, in the end, we all live in the shadow of that Eleventh Colossus.
Email the author of this post at steerpike@tap-repeatedly.com.
You suck Steerpike.
Excellent article and only the other day were me and Armand kinda discussing this with regards to Portal 2. I had a few very minor issues with it but they paled when I considered just how damn good the overall thing is. The thing is, what threatens to undermine my enjoyment could very well be a highlight for you and vice-versa.
For instance, that Eleventh Colossus was one of the most memorable (but certainly not the best) for me and my mum. We spent ages sussing out how to kill it — we found out that the Colossus was afraid of fire relatively quickly (I’m sure this is hinted at in-game somewhere) — it was the actual sending the Colossus off the cliff to break its shell that took us a while to work out.
Also, with regards to Homeworld, I didn’t even get that far because the thing that killed it for me was having to manually send each ship individually to a repair station just to get them back in to tip-top shape. Even if your ships were in close proximity to one there wasn’t any kind of auto-repair or auto-dock — it drove me bat shit insane having to nanny them all, all the time. That was my Eleventh Colossus or moment of ‘hitting the wall’ (as Mat C called it waaay back). A minor, possibly moot point to some but a game breaker for me.
I also didn’t encounter any problems with finding loot on the Haunted Cathedral level, call me thorough!
Some of the worst moments I’ve had in otherwise top games were in Psychonauts, Call of Duty 4 and Beyond Good & Evil. Psychonauts for Tent City and The Big Top levels, Call of Duty 4 for that last nuclear bunker raid and Beyond Good & Evil for the raft section at the end. They were all Eleventh Colossi for me. Man oh man, those moments can rot in my recycle bin.
Whoa, that was longer than I expected.
Good work, Steerpike!
I am not sure what Colossus I tried to kill in “Shadow Of The Colossus”, but I know it was in a lake. I kept having to run up along it’s arm to try to kill it and kept falling off into the lake over and over and over again… Whatever Colossus that Colossus was my own personal Eleventh Colossus and the only time I ever played that game.
Over time, in games that I am enjoying, such as, for example, “Half-Life 2” or “Fallout 3”, I usually try to figure something out, but the moment I begin to sense some great frustration, some Eleventh Colossus moment coming on, I immediately hit the internet, find a walk-through and move on. I don’t have the time and have lost the patience to struggle through overly frustrating gaming moments.
Also, I think I can finally sum up something that I have found hard to explain:
Demon’s Soul = The Eleventh Colossus over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Without a save. That game is one giant Eleventh Colossus.
You’re gonna hate this, but I really like the eleventh colossus. The only one I didn’t really care for in the game was the final one, and not because it was hard, but because I found it dull and anti-climactic. Compared to my favorite, the one in the desert where you have to ride next to its fins, leap off your horse, and climb up its side, now that was epic! Like a train heist in a western, but with an awesome freakin’ flying sand worm!
As for Portal 2, I can’t find anything to complain about. Honestly, the only place I got “stuck” was the final boss battle, and once I figured out what I was doing wrong, I realized I was just being stupid.
Seriously though, I can easily say I loved P2 more than the original.
You clear suck at games.
But seriously I had the same thing with a different collossus. The one where you had to hit some teeth to steer it through a lake… I could not figure that one out. Spent about an hour and a half bashing my head against a wall. I didn’t have internet at home so had to wait until the next day to look up the solution and if I hadn’t been playing it as part of my challenge last year I wouldn’t have bothered.
My perfect games don’t have eleventh colossi in them. If they do, they aren’t perfect.
I started reading this and I thought I bet you this is about fucking Portal 2, attempting to insert Portal 2 into the discourse while being all subtle, like. And you did. This was about fucking Portal 2. And then you put fucking Thief in and I didn’t see that coming.
I had an article idea up my sleeve for a rainy day, about whether we can forgive games that have sinned against us – can we get over those problems that pushed us away from the game, and return to finish them? Guess I won’t need to write that article now, will I?
Oh Homeworld lost me very early on, probably on the skirmish where you’re supposed to be mining asteroids or something. I don’t know what it is about me and space sims, we have issues.
Anyway, nice article Steerpike. I had absolutely no idea anyone got stuck on The Haunted Cathedral. Absolutely none. Loot was never a problem as far as I remember, just having to change my goddamn trousers every ten minutes.
Septerra Core is something I remember giving up on for a similar reason. We weren’t sure how to progress at a certain point midway through the game and every time you wanted to try something, you had to spend ten minutes going through screens of respawning enemies. After a while it was NO WAY LIFE TOO SHORT.
I don’t recall many of the Colossi, really. Just the first. And some sand dragon thing. Great game…just so, so long ago. I will play it again once they rerelease it. I DO remember being disappointed at their recycling of a colossus. Didn’t they have two that were similar…were they cats? Too damn long ago.
Homeworld is awesome, Steerpike, and you should feel much shame for betraying your “games=art” stance. No art is perfect. No game is perfect. And you threw Homeworld away because of one shitty level. I am shamed for you.
I don’t know if it compares exactly, but the Valley of Defilement in Demon’s Souls plays like the 11th colossus multiplied by the supernova level. Stupid planks and falling to my death. Stupid giants. Stupid poison and black phantoms.
As for Portal 2, I loved every minute of it. There were a few instances when I felt like I had played enough for the day, usually after two hours or so, but I don’t blame the game. My appetite for puzzles fills after a couple of hours, that’s all.
Sorry for the rambling post. Lazy day.
I had the same problem with Septerra Core HM. It seemed like it had so much potential, but the endless grind just killed it.
Kobayashi maru?
Maybe, in a strange way, there are lessons to be learned from the frustratingly hard, perhaps even from the impossible.
Or maybe we should all just learn to whip out the walkthrough (or cheat) a lot sooner.
Having been a pc-philiac for over a decade I have never played colossus. Its alright – I know everything there is to know about that game now, bless the internet. Its about a loving relationship with a horse and you drag him around the level by hand to escape the shadows.
Jordan, sometimes I want to punish a game for being too punishing. A walkthrough is the dirty developer’s getout clause.
Yeah I can certainly remember that Colossus too badger commander. I spent a whole evening swimming around that lagoon, jumping off those islands in the hopes of discovering exactly what it was I was supposed to do. I think I found out the solution by lashing out in rage on top of the Colossus’ head. “HAVE THAT YOU LUMBERING FUC– Oh!”
I’m the same HM, I had no idea that the Haunted Cathedral level was infamous for its painfully hidden loot either. I just got the gold and got out. I seem to remember finding a tiny ring in the dark on a shelf somewhere on that level and being spectacularly surprised at my discovery while simultaneously doubting my sanity for being that thorough.
@Ajax and Dobbers: I’d totally forgotten about Demon’s Souls. I think after the suicidal crystal lizard incident I’ve repressed my memory of that game. There: The Suicidal Crystal Lizard is my Eleventh Colossus. It marked the exact moment that I stopped playing Demon’s Souls. The area effect attack spamming of the Flamelurker I could handle. The shitty Armour Spider which only revealed its weak spot after approximately 312 fireballs I could handle. The suicidal crystal lizard? Not a chance.
Heh, I’ve died chasing many crystal lizards. I don’t really chase them that much any more, not unless I know, and I mean KNOW there’s no cliff ahead.
All of Demon’s Souls is the Eleventh Colossus, probably making it ineligible for the definition: A rare and frustrating moment in an otherwise elegantly and supremely fun game. Demon’s Souls does not contain “rare frustrating moments,” only common ones.
I guess it’s all relative; the Valley of Defilement is relatively more frustrating when compared to the rest of the game.
Any other Eleventh Colossus moments out there?
I see Eleventh Colossus moments as sudden and unexpected squalls of irritation in an experience that’s otherwise heavenly. Like eating the best steak sandwich ever, and then biting down into a piece of gristle. Gristle is beneath such a sandwich. Its presence there is an offense, not an oversight.
That’s why, in my opinion, only the most perfect games can have Eleventh Colossus moments. Most games, even great ones, you judge fairly – realistically. But certain absolutely splendiferous transcendent games – Portal, Shadow of the Colossus, Homeworld – I find it hard to judge them fairly or realistically because they are so good. In a normal game, there are just flaws, frustrations, issues, missteps… that kind of thing. And sometimes there are even egregious failures that ruin the game. But they don’t have Eleventh Colossi.
Most games are just a regular steak sandwich, , or a bad one, or an unusually good one. Very few are a steak sandwich prepared by God himself and hand delivered by a chorus of angels.
So an Eleventh Colossus is like a personal snag that you begrudge acknowledging because of how good everything else is around it?
Sort of. An Eleventh Colossus taints the goodness of the whole just ever so slightly, but because the whole is so good, that tiny little pinprick poisons the experience way out of proportion to its actual negative value.
It’s an overreaction, too, because it’s silly to resent a game that’s so good over something so insignificant, but I find myself doing it, until the inimitable force of Dobry’s logic talks me down from the ledge. I’m able to look at Portal 2, for example, as I should: a wonderful, stellar game. BD (Before Dobry), I was irritated with it, even though that irritation was completely irrational, even unfair. But it’s how I felt.
Fortunately, in some cases Eleventh Colossus moments can be squashed down to their correct proportions.
I remember being annoyed by the 11th Colossus, also getting to a near controller throwing rage, as I’d continually be pummeled and have no where to go. And I do find that kind of moment in many other lesser games than SOTC… Personally, I’m glad it doesn’t mar my feelings about it. SOTC remains One of the ‘Divine Steak sandwiches’ that Steerpike mentions. And with a game so superior in all other aspects, it’s hard to fault one small gameplay issue… Now this would be an entirely different discussion if the “11thC” in a game rendered the game unplayable. Bugs, glitches, etc. Thankfully that’s not the case in SOTC.
One of my other personal Divine Steak sanwiches is Demon’s Souls, and I’m glad people mention it here. But I disagree with it being classified in the same way in regards to it having 11thc moments all the way through. SOTC made things less obvious for a single encounter, out of step with the other encounters in the game, that is to say, it was exceptionally more difficult to figure that one Colossus out compared to all the others. But Demon’s Souls was hard as a matter of design, and I understood that. I’d have to say that DS was probably the best game I’ve ever played, and mostly BECAUSE it was hard and verged on frustrating. Demon’s Souls was made to be conquered. To climb to the top of it victorious. And finishing DS was one of the, if not THE most satisfying moments I’ve personally had in gaming.
And while this MAY show my age, anyone remember playing Ninja Gaiden on the NES? The final bosses… drove me insane… arguably one of the finest NES games made… but if I hadn’t spent so much time getting there, and spending the little money I had on it, I’d have given up on it.
So an Eleventh Colossus is irrational beef?
Edit: See, I wouldn’t say your Homeworld beef is irrational. That sounds like a legitimate criticism to me, as does your Thief one (even if I didn’t notice it). The Eleventh Colossus sounds guilty as charged though m’lord. That I’d try talking you down from.
INSPIRATIONAL beef… depending on your particular religious bent of course…
This water colossus some of you are talking about… is that the one with little electric probes on its back? The one swimming in the lake… (unless there are more than one in a lake?)
I beat that after about 35 minutes of perseverance, no walkthrough required.
Take that.
Unless you’re talking about a different one. I don’t know. Like I’ve been saying for ages, I’m still savoring that game and have only downed 8 or 9 colossi thus far. I definitely haven’t reached the eleventh colossus yet. I wonder if it will be as horrible for me now that I know that you need to wave some fire at the poor bloke.
Perhaps. I have a unique ability, one that could be coveted I suspect, where I actually know how to legitimately make my brain forget spoilers that I read or hear … pertaining to anything: game, book, film… I can just willfully forget. The whole process takes a few days. Because of this I may have to drag on SotC for a few extra years… but I’m okay with that. I never want to end with it.
Actually, I get what you mean now; quitting the magnificent Thief: The Dark Project because of that issue would be irrational. The issue itself may be legitimate but not grounds enough to walk away. At least for me.
Even being angry at Thief for that mission would be irrational. But for some reason it can be hard.
Arctic Black, welcome to the site! You should know that Ajax19 is not to be trusted when it comes to Demon’s Souls. Normally he is to be trusted – he is the Tap-Repeatedly Legal Advisor on Corporate Law – but not on Demon’s Souls. He played angry, you see. Never play Demon’s Souls angry.
@Dobbers: Just to clarify the suicidal crystal lizard wasn’t a lizard that sent me plummeting to my death; it was the lizard that died after throwing itself off of a cliff leaving its precious crystals in an inaccessible place, crystals that would never appear again. It’s a bit daft of me to hate the game because of that but I couldn’t bare the thought of some rare crystal being unobtainable for the rest of the game and denying me of a certain upgrade path. Pah!
Playing Demon’s Souls whilst angry is akin to seeing soap opera characters driving in a car: all involved parties are fucked.
I would say that my hatred of Demon’s Souls is irrational, but it’s not. It’s quite rational. It was almost as if the game was specifically designed for me to hate it.
The only thing it appeared to lack is jumping puzzles. Man, how I hate jumping puzzles.
I did enjoy it for the first 30 minutes I played it. Then I saw what it truly was… The veil was lifted. What is seen cannot be unseen.
Well… then I guess Demon’s Souls ITSELF was your 11th Colossus. But no worries, it’s not a game for everyone, even tho I think everyone should try it. Kudos for having at least given it a go.
Gregg, I only caught about six or seven of those idiot lizards during the whole game and I finished it just fine.
I’m replaying it as a warrior/mage hybrid. I haven’t found any new spells yet. I think I hijacked this thread.
It’s funny, because when I rave about Thief I I love to rave about how masterful the pacing was, between sneaking and exploration. It wasn’t just white-knuckle tension all the time. And when I talk about that, the missions I keep coming back to are Down in the Bonehoard, and…..The Haunted Cathedral! I actually thought that was one of the best missions in the game, a gentle warmup of your heart muscles for the terrifying Return. I guess I got lucky with loot for that mission.
That was what bugged me about Thief II more than anything: in the name of making the game “tougher”, they took away a lot of that breezy exploration-based change of pace. Thief I was like regular breathing, a steady inhaling and exhaling. Thief II felt like holding my breath for the duration of each mission (with a few notable exceptions, like Trail of Blood).
Whoa. Got a little off topic there. Oh well.
I like the ‘Eleventh Colossus’ moniker for this sort of thing. It’s a good term and I suspect I’ll find myself using it (with credit where it’s due, of course).
Re. Thief, I don’t recall the haunted cathedral level if I’m honest – the stage at which the game became an irritation and almost a chore, for me, was a few levels before the end; poking around in the faerie kingdom-styled levels.
As for Homeworld… I remember that level and my only real issue with it was having to constantly monitor my mining ships. The stupid little sods would, of course, perpetually blunder outside of the safe zone and be quickly obliterated. For me, the Eleventh Colossus of Homeworld was the dreadnought sphere; an enormous spherical defence formation of enemy ships. When confronted with an enemy force of that size and composition I gave up. Shame, really, as I suspect I was not far from the end.
In terms of level design I preferred Portal 2, on the whole, chiefly because the emphasis was on puzzles over platforming. The final test chamber in Portal 1 is a frustrating (if brilliant) piece of work.
Here’s a good one… it’s a MOVIE that has and 11th colossus!
The Ninth Gate with Johnny Depp. My god, it was such an amazing film… beautiful, interesting and brilliantly acted, and then it abruptly ends. Just… ends. No further explanations, no ties ups, not even a bloody cliffhanger. This one little moment COMPLETELY ruined an otherwise brilliant film. I think I actually got up and started storming around the room in anger while my roommate just stared dumbfounded at the screen. Damn… I get heated just thinking about it.
@ShaunCG – Welcome to Tap! Stick around! I feel that the level design in both Portals was masterful; actually both games were masterful. In general Portal 2 seemed a little more… “messy,” I guess, but not necessarily in a bad way. There was more going on.
@Arouet – I feel I should clarify: I also loved the Haunted Cathedral level. I always enjoyed being on City streets, even haunted ones. And that mission was so eerie (with a few jump-out-of-skin scares), and there was so much to explore. But some people couldn’t find their loot quotient and never forgave Thief for that. Losers.
@Arctic Black – you know, I love The Ninth Gate. Love. Love it. You’re right, the ending is a terribly cruel thing to do to the audience, but… what else could it have been? I liked not knowing what happened in the final moments.
Dunno man… there could have been any one of a million ways to end it, even letting Polanski keep an ‘arthouse’ (read: pretentious) ending. I watch, read or play a story, movie or game because I want to see what happens. A move like this feels more like the filmmakers thinking over the heads of the audience, thus the ‘pretentious’ moniker.
Now this isn’t to say I REQUIRE a completely summed up ending. Take Shadow of the Colossus for example. There’s a lot going on in that ending, and not everything is tied up with a neat little bow. One has to allow that the world moves on beyond the game experience, but there is an ending, a point where the plot of the game has completed. The Ninth Gate has no ending. it feels like it just stops, as if they just ran out of money and said. “Whatev. Just put it in the can and send it out – it’ll be arty.” As a filmmaker myself, I know that’s not the case here, but it just feels that way.
Well… that certainly veered the topic a bit! But it’s an interesting angle. The notion of one little thing in an otherwise exceptional experience (not just a game) that destroys it for the one experiencing it. Any takers? or are we veering TOO far off topic?
We are the kings and queens of veering off topic at Tap-Repeatedly. In fact, following a debate or conversation from beginning to end requires a lot of experience and skill, and like a crossover comic series can meander through 15 articles and across a dozen forum posts. After a while you get used to it.
Funnily enough, I hated the ending of Shadow of the Colossus. Well, not hated. I didn’t like it. It could have been better. It’s not the way I would have done it. But I’ll say no more because I have a long piece on Shadow in the oven right now. Stay tuned for details!
The Ninth Gate was based on Auturo Perez Reverte’s novel The Club Dumas, a much, much stronger work. Polanski apparently went insane at the end the filim and completely botched what up to that point had been a pretty decent adaptation. If you want closure on that story, read the book.
I’m with ya, Scout. I read The Club Dumas. I liked it a great deal (Not my favorite of his books – that would be The Flanders Panel, which is very different from Dumas…and I just can’t get into the Alatriste books. Got a couple; will try again some day). I was very disappointed in the movie. Then again, I’m usually less then happy with movie adaptations of books that I’ve loved/liked.
Steerpike, I see your response to Arctic Black. AB: while we are officially Tap Repeatedly, our nickname is Tangentistan (thanks Yap).
Welcome all newcomers. Stick around. We need a new furnace filter.
Yikes! I got one yesterday! I guess it’s time to change that footer…
I’ll save you the trouble of finishing your article, Matt, and say they completely cheesed out with the return of the horse.
Pathos…undone.
Disney ending…present…
>All of Demon’s Souls is the Eleventh Colossus
This seems almost like a koan.
What Ajax said about Demons’ Souls – I agree wholeheartedly.
I clearly recall that mission in Homeworld that you found so frustrating. Fortunately, it wasn’t a game breaker for me and persistence paid off with successful completion. That is a truly great game.
Ha! You see, Steerpike? You DO suck!
[…] The Eleventh Colossus | Tap-Repeatedly – This is human nature, I think. The more we love, the more we see the flaws; the more unfair we are when we judge them; the more difficulty we have letting them go. The Eleventh Colossus ate up maybe 30 minutes of a 16-hour game. That’s like three percent. But even now, when long years have buffed away any other complaints I might have had, I remember less that it transported me and more that it couldn’t do it throughout – the Eleventh Colossus had broken the spell. Tags: videogames gamedesign frustration eleventhcolossus […]
[…] of Awesome neighbours have shared some opinions already. Armand at BnB thought it was excellent. Steerpike of Tap-Repeatedly got angry with the game, but then got angry with himself. Then we all got angry with Steerpike, […]
I just defeated the eleventh colossus. Figuring out what to do wasn’t too difficult– once the psycho-bull knocked down a torch it was clear– but the execution was frustrating. I had to try jumping on his back four times, and even when I did it properly twice it was still hard to get any hits in before the grip ran out.
Still, it was only about a 25 minute battle, compared to the sand snake guy which took me almost an hour to figure out and take down.
With only 5 more colossi it’s becoming harder to slowly savor this game. I’ve done well so far- been playing it for about 2 years and 4 months now.
xtal..
.. I’m not sure how to adequately convey the contrast between our experiences. Suffice to say I couldn’t afford the game, so I rented it for one week. I had to complete it within that timespan to avoid paying a second week. I wonder if either of us derived more pleasure from the experience?
I just finished off the 11th Colossus…and seriously, I was sooo close to just quitting the game, and succeeding this battle was only possible for me, because I knew that the ruins had two entries, one via the ramp and one by jumping off a bridge a bit further away. Because I never was able to jump right on the back of the colossus after his fall and after that…no luck trying to escape him. So I just let him chase and throw me to the lake, swam through it, ran up the ramp, returned to the fire room via the second entry and then just climbed on those fire pillars to be able to jump on his back (since he conveniently had returned to his hall, I also had to consult a walkthrough and this was mighty good information).
With one earlier colossus I had been occupied for more than three hours, but I didn’t care, it was an exciting match and I never felt completely helpless and frustrated, it was just the usual “I know how to beat you and now I have to give it a couple tries until I suceed while enjoying the hell out of this battle…wait, where did the time go??”. The one where I actually can run away and not get pinned down every time I want to get up.
So I’m glad I’m not the only one and I had a good laugh about being “Eleventh-Colossused”. I have to remember that term. 😀
This looks noticeably better on the HD version. The controls seem tighter as well. I got through every colossus without much trouble – except the last one. He’s about as tough as I remember.